Mama Coca
Nadège Mazars
Raya Editorial
English and Spanish
Edited by Santiago Escobar-Jaramillo
Texts by Nadège Mazars, Damian Augusto Gonzales Escudero, and Aïda Quilcué
Hardcover
Edition of 1000
Includes booklet
306 pages
230 x 170 mm
2025
ISBN 9786280195582
Mama Coca reframes the narrative built around coca and examines its prohibition, a plant that has been part of the heritage of South American native communities for thousands of years. It highlights the hope of building a different future through Indigenous struggles in a region particularly affected by the violence of internal conflicts. The photobook brings together a series of photographs taken in the department of Cauca (Colombia) about the indigenous guard and the main rituals of the Nasa people, with texts and archives.
In Nasa communities, coca is still widely used and consumed, especially in ritual practices. It is key to spiritual connections. It is chewed during the harvesting of other plants, as coca helps identify them. It is still chewed during preparation and rituals. The leaves are also offered to the fire. Coca is essential for reaffirming Indigenous identity after the human, social, and cultural disasters caused by colonialism. It is considered intrinsically linked to communities. For this reason, Indigenous authorities affirm that consultation is a fundamental right regarding its use, particularly for industrial or scientific research purposes.
Indigenous guards, whose sticks are not weapons but rather a symbolic representation of the authority conferred upon them by the communities, organize the care of the territory and its inhabitants. They are on the front lines of a terrible fight against drug trafficking, which recruits many young people and minors from Indigenous communities through the armed groups operating in the area.
The photobook presents two examples of plant appropriation: the case of Coca-Cola, which continues to use the banned plant in its secret formula while initiating legal proceedings against the Colombian indigenous company Coca Nasa for its use of the term “coca.” And the case of drug trafficking and the violence that plunged indigenous communities and their social movement into mourning.
By dismantling the double language of prohibition and economic exploitation, the photobook denounces this expression of colonialism that seeks to appropriate Indigenous heritage. To contextualize and reposition the historical depth of the discourse produced around coca, the inclusion of financial documents, press clippings, found photographs, hacked emails, biochemical graphs, and official documents from agencies such as the DEA and the NSA, among other visual materials, is essential. These elements generate a polyphonic dialogue with the photographs, reinforced and enriched by the voice of the Nasa community, whose presence permeates and gives life to the book. The texts, which include a prologue by a Nasa senator, an article by a precolonial historian, explanatory notes, quotes from spiritual authorities, and an artist’s statement, deepen the debate by multiplying voices, amplifying collaborations, and challenging representations.
(Source: https://www.nadegemazars.com/mama-coca-book-here)
About the Artists
Nadège Mazars is a documentary photographer who has resided in Colombia since 2007. Mazars focuses on providing an intimate approach to the effects of global issues such as migration, nature, war, and peace. She is also marked by a perspective both critical and comprehensive, seeking to deconstruct and participate in changing the existing social representations and narratives. Her work has been exhibited at the Fotofestiwal in Lodz (2023), the Truth Commission in Colombia (2022), Transphotographiques in Lille (2021), Photoville in New York (2020), the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (2020), the Framer Framed gallery in Amsterdam (2019), the ZOOM Festival in Saguenay (2016), and screened four times at the Visa pour l’Image festival since 2016. Alongside her personal work, Mazars works regularly for the press and is a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, The Washington Post, Libération, among others. She has a PhD. in Sociology from Paris III in 2013, about the construction of the territorial and political indigenous autonomy through their management of the Colombian healthcare system.
https://www.nadegemazars.com/
(Source: https://www.nadegemazars.com/about-me)
Damian Augusto Gonzales Escudero is a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Theory, a doctoral candidate at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, a professor in the Academic Department of Law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, an associate member of the Riva Agüero Institute (PUCP), with a Master’s degree in History and a Master’s degree in Civil Law from the PUCP, and a lawyer from the PUCP.
https://www.pucp.edu.pe/profesor/damian-gonzales-escudero
(Source: https://dictaduraseniberoamerica.com/integrantes/peru/prof-damian-gonzales)
Aída Quilcué is an indigenous leader from Tierradentro, Cauca. A member of the Nasa group, Quilcué has occupied a number of leadership roles for various organizations, including the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) and the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC). Quicué is currently a Senator from Colombia’s Alternative Indigenous Social Movement (MAIS). She has led dozens of indigenous mobilizations, including the 2020 Minga Indígena that culminated with tens of thousands of peaceful indigenous protestors from Cauca arriving to Bogotá, urging the national government to take action against the rampant violence affecting Colombia’s indigenous territories.
(Source: https://voicesfromthevoid.org/aida/)
About the Publisher
Raya Editorial is especially focused on conceiving, editing, designing, and publishing photobooks. ‘A photobook is read like a novel, watched like a movie,’ says Horacio Fernández. It is in the turning of the pages that the photos carry the weight of the narrative. The reader is given the opportunity to read a story through images and the interplay they can create together: rhythms, pauses, dialogues, opposites, action-reaction, surprises, climaxes, changes in temperature, temporality, color, and emotions. At RAYA EDITORIAL, we are interested in understanding the photobook as an object-book-experience, where the material, texture, shapes, and layers compose a unity that responds to the unique universe of each project. Therefore, the editing and design work is done jointly, with the participation of the authors in collective sessions, which we have called Editing Tables.
https://rayaeditorial.co
(Source: https://rayaeditorial.co/editorial/)
